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overview
holdings
landmarks
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overview
This
profile consider the Packer family, Consolidated Press
and Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd (PBL).
It covers -
introduction
At its height the Packer empire was one of the defining
forces in Australian media politics, embracing television
(the leading Nine Network and 25% of Foxtel), property,
publishing (eg Bulletin and Womans Weekly),
gambling (eg Crown and Burswood casinos), pastoral and
other holdings. Following the death of Kerry Packer the
family has progressively been exiting from media, apparently
in favour of expansion in the casino industry.
the group
An overview of Packer interests as at October 2001 is
here. It covers public companies
- in particular Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd (PBL),
which spun off its media assets into PBL Media, a joint
venture with public equity group CVC in 2006 - and some
private holdings, some controlled by the unlisted Consolidated
Press Holdings (CPH).
Overall PBL directly and through a 25% stake in PBL Media
- encompasses the Nine television network (owns &
operates three capital city and one regional station,
with two capital city and five regional affiliates), magazine
publishing, gambling, cinema and other holdings.
history
The group dates from the 1920s, when newspaper manager
Robert Packer was given a stake in James Joynton Smith's
Smith's Weekly. Robert managed Smith's Daily
Guardian and Sunday Guardian, subsequently
serving as chief executive of the Sydney Associated
Newspapers group.
His son Frank (1906-1974) established the Australian
Womens Weekly and in partnership with 'Red Ted' Theodore
- the former federal treasurer - later acquired the Daily
Telegraph. During the thirties and forties the Packers
expanded their publishing interests, with great success,
and later moved into television.
Kerry Packer (1937-2005), Robert's grandson, made unsuccessful
but lucrative bids for the Fairfax
group, Westpac bank, UK conglomerate BAT and other companies.
He survived a 'near death experience' and allegations
of questionable tax practice, sold the Nine television
Sydney and Melbourne stations to Alan Bond
for $855 million (and gained the Nine Brisbane, Sydney
and Melbourne stations in 1990 when Bond Media failed
to pay $200 million preference shares), gained a 25% share
in dominant cable tv network Foxtel, bought and sold large
chemical interests (resulting in 7% of the equity of the
global Huntsman chemicals group as of early 2003), and
acquired control of Crown casino and Hoyts cinema group.
Subsequent investments were less successful, with embarrassment
over underperformance by the ecorp new media arm and problems
with the One.Tel holding ($375 million investment in an
Australian mobile phone group that at its peak in 1999
had a market value of $5.3 billion but collapsed in 2001).
Hyperbole about the Packer 'midas touch' was undermined
by losses relating to property development with Western
Australian entrepreneur Warren Anderson (down an estimated
$200 million on the high profile Westralia Square project)
and 10% of Indian telecommunications group Himachal Futuristic
(estimated $396 million investment).
In 1997 Packer interests sold a stake in Village
Roadshow for $100 million and in the following year took
a major stake in Hoyts cinemas. Hoyts was delisted by
Packer in 1999 for an aggregate $750 million. At that
time it was the tenth largest cinema chain in the world
with 1,541 screens, including 183 in Australia and 965
in the US. Hoyts operations in Germany, Poland and the
UK were sold for $70 million. Hoyts' Mexican operations
went for $130 million; sale of its US arm brought in several
hundred million. The family took a substantial stake in
KVP Ventures, claimed as the largest VC fund in India
when announced in 2000 but apparently unwound in 2001.
eCorp (formerly PBL Online) was floated in 1999 and privatised
in 2003.
In January 2003 CPH Investments (in which the family had
a 30% stake) announced plans to merge with Challenger
International (in which the Packers had a 19%) stake to
become one of the 150 largest companies listed on the
Australian Stock Exchange. A month later CPH sold most
of the Hoyts America cinemas (900 screens, around 102
locations) to US-based Regal
Entertainment, in which it gained a 5% stake. CPH retained
Hoyts Australia (43 cinemas in Australia), Hoyts New Zealand
and minor cinema operations in South America.
During the same year PBL paid $33 million for a 25% interest
in Seek.com online recruitment agency and acquired 15.75%
stake of Burswood casino for $77.3 million, moving to
control in July 2004. Challenger paid $187 million for
assets held by Zurich Capital Markets, including wholesale
mortgage financier Interstar and 84,500 hectares of forests,
after selling a 2.3% stake in Puma sportswear for a $32
million profit.
In December 2004 CPH announced the sale of Hoyts to its
publicly-listed subsidiary PBL and West Australian Newspapers
Holdings (WAN). That sale was expected
to increase the family's stake in PBL to 39.1% from 37.4%.
Hoyts operates 377 cinema screens in 47 complexes (accounting
for 23% of the Australian market and 16% in New Zealand),
an independent film distribution business and Val Morgan
Cinema Advertising, with an enterprise value of $520 million.
In October 2006 PBL annnounced plans to transfer its media
interests to a new company, PBL Media, a joint venture
with CVC Asia
Pacific. PBL would receive net cash proceeds of $4.542
billion. The media interests included ACP Magazines, the
Nine Network (including its stake in Sky News), its 50%
interest in ninemsn and 41% stake in carsales.com.au.
The move anticipated changes to Australia's media ownership
regime, with new legislation expected to pass in 2006.
In February 2007 PBL Media announced that it would acquire
100% of Sunraysia Television subsidiary
Swan Television & Radio Broadcasters Pty Ltd (ie Channel
Nine Perth) for $136.4 million. In June of that year PBL
sold a further 25% stake in PBL Media Holdings Pty Ltd
to CVC for $515 million. It concurrently sold its Ticketek
and Acer Arena interests to PBL Media for $210 million.
In January 2008 Lachlan Murdoch's and James Packer made
a i $3.3 billion bid to privatise Packer's Consolidated
Media Holdings (CMH), with the expectation that each would
take a 50% stake. CMH had interests in the Nine television
network and ACP magazine group (through its 25% stake
in PBL Media), 25% of pay-TV operator Foxtel (25% held
by News Corp, controlled by Lachlan's father), 50% of
the Fox Sports pay-TV channe and the Seek jobs website.
pastoral
Consolidated Pastoral, Australia's second-largest cattle
owner, was established in 1983 when Kerry Packer acquired
the Newcastle Waters Station in the Northern Territory.
As of early 2007 the Consolidated's 16 pastoral properties
in four states cover over 4 million hectares. Consolidated
is believed to have r accumulated losses of $287 million
by late 2006, with bank debt of $745 million after a $36
million loss for 2005-06.
studies
There are surprisingly few books about the Packers.
The best is probably Paul Barry's The Rise & Rise
of Kerry Packer (Sydney: Bantam 1993), a penetrating
study of the man and empire. Barry's Rich Kids
(Sydney: Bantam 2002) covers the One.Tel debacle; Gerald
Stone's Who Killed Channel 9? (Sydney: Pan Macmillan
2007) offers a splenetic view of turmoil in Kerry Packer's
last years.
For an academic treatment we recommend Bridget Griffen-Foley's
Sir Frank Packer: The Young Master (Sydney: Collins
2000) and The House of Packer: The Making Of An Empire
(St Leonards: Allen & Unwin 1999).
They supersede R S Whitington's Sir Frank: The Frank
Packer Story (Melbourne: Cassell 1971), which provoked
Richard Walsh's comment
The
life of Sir Frank Packer - though this present hagiography
almost disguises the fact - is that of a larrikin who
almost all his life has had the kind of money to indulge
himself to the full. He is brutal in his treatment of
those who cross him and power-hungry in his dealings
and manipulations of men and events. Of course, as Sir
Robert (Menzies) thoughtfully avers, such faults are
masculine. But so presumably were Hitler's.
Ross
Fitzgerald's Red Ted: The Life of E G Theodore
(St Lucia: Uni of Qld Press 1994) offers a nuanced portrait
of the empire's early days and Sir Frank's partner Ted
Theodore, the former Qld Premier and proto-Keynesian federal
Treasurer.
Other perspectives are offered in the major biographies
of Rupert Murdoch (we recommend
George Munster's A Paper Prince over William Shawcross'
Murdoch) and Gavin Souter's two studies of the
Fairfax's Sydney Morning Herald
(SMH)
group - Company of Heralds and Heralds &
Angels (Melbourne: Melbourne Uni Press 1981 and 1991).
Stone's Compulsive Viewing: Inside Packer's Nine Network
(Melbourne: Viking 2000) is a 60 Minutes flavoured
account - colour, action, a fascination with the big fella
and legal stoushes - of the leading commercial network.
Sandra Hall's Turning on Turning Off: Australian Television
in the Eighties (North Ryde: Cassell 1986) has bite.
Henry Blofeld's The Packer Affair (London: Collins
1978), Christopher Forsyth's The Great Cricket Hijack
(Melbourne: Widescope 1978) and Gideon Haigh's excellent
The Cricket War: the Inside Story of Kerry Packer's
World Series (Carlton: Melbourne Uni Press 2008)
deal with the World Series Cricket imbroglio.
For broadcasting policy consult Trevor Barr's incisive
Newmedia.com.au: The Changing Face of Australia's Media
& Communications (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin
2000) and the blow by blow account in The Gatekeepers:
The Global Media Battle to control Australia's Pay TV
(Annandale: Pluto Press 2000) by Mark Westfield.
The latter might be supplemented by the drier account
in Cento Veljanovski's 72 page IPA paper (PDF)
on Pay TV in Australia: Markets & Mergers and
Fred Brenchley's sympathetic Allan Fels: A Portrait
of Power (Milton: Wiley 2003). We have highlighted
telecommunications and Australian pay-tv conundrums in
a special profile
on the Caslon site.
For the Packer newspapers see RB Walker's Yesterday's
News: A History of the Newspaper Press in New South Wales
from 1920 to 1945 (Sydney: Sydney Uni Press 1980)
and Patrick Buckridge's The Scandalous Penton: A Biography
of Brian Penton (St Lucia: Uni of Queensland Press
1994).
The outstanding history of the early Bulletin is
The Archibald Paradox, A strange case of authorship
(Ringwood: Allen Lane 1983) by Sylvia Lawson. For the
later period there's an account in Patricia Rolfe's The
Journalistic Javelin: An illustrated history of the Bulletin
(Sydney: Wildcat Press 1979). There's a broader perspective
in The Way We Were: Australian Popular Magazines, 1856
to 1969 (Melbourne: Oxford Uni Press 1983) by Vane
Lindesay.
For the Weekly see Denis O'Brien's The Weekly:
A lively and nostalgic celebration of Australia through
50 years of its most popular magazine (Ringwood: Penguin
1982).
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